Anthrosource

Cultural Anthropology

Volume 19. Issue 2. May 2004 (Pages 196 - 225)

Recovering True Selves in the Electro-Spiritual Field of Universal Love:

Nickola Pazderic

ABSTRACT In Taiwan, the quasi-religious practice of Heqi reveals a complex relationship between the neoliberal demand for success; conceptions of energy and love; technologies of audio transmission; reception, and recording; and the production of modern selves. A transnational coalescence of psychoanalysis and Heqi as both theory and practice produces modern, properly cultured subjects fully in tune with the prevailing demands of global capitalism. Furthermore, these therapies and their explanatory discourses reflect, as much as they describe, globally salient audio technologies (such as radio).